A singer in a recent session said "those bright lights are distracting me, would you please turn them down?" We couldn't figure out what she meant, and it turned out they were the lights in the rack of preamps way to one side of the room. So we covered the front of the rack with a blanket. She actually sang better after taking care of the lights, even though her eyes were closed most of the time. I don't record vocals often and after that session I started wishing I did, because she had a very beautiful voice (and an interesting personality).

A singer in a recent session said "those bright lights are distracting me, would you please turn them down?" We couldn't figure out what she meant, and it turned out they were the lights in the rack of preamps way to one side of the room. So we covered the front of the rack with a blanket. She actually sang better after taking care of the lights, even though her eyes were closed most of the time. I don't record vocals often and after that session I started wishing I did, because she had a very beautiful voice (and an interesting personality).

One of the first times I was in a recording studio, they were recording a client who insisted a blanket be hung over the Control Room window. The singer faced away from the window into a prayer rug and played a root and fifth on his guitar and chanted some kind of incantations. The engineers were instructed to roll tape, and when the tape ran out, start a new one, but not interrupt him. He would track 4-5 hours at a clip, running up quite the tape bill.

No idea what, if anything was 'done' with the recordings. They gave his sessions to the junior engineer and that way she got some experience and it's not like anything ever needed to be changed.

The studio was a residential studio in an old hotel. There were monitors in the corridors and public room that you could turn up to check what was happening in the studio. Every now and then my friend would flip one on and every single time, it sounded exactly the same. Same key, same tempo, same words.